At the end of the day, I just want some quiet

Can you hear it? That sound? The "Mommy Mommy Mommy" three kids talking at once ask for something the second I sit down whine whine whine throw self down on floor because Mommy won't let me do ANYTHING I want (ok that last one's mostly the 3 year old).

Yeah, I don't hear it either. Because everyone just went to bed. The house is nice and quiet.

Now, here is my revelation for the day: when that quiet time hits, I need to sit down and soak it in.

I have been feeling guilty that I don't jump into some project immediately after the kids' heads hit their pillows. I feel like I should tidy. Clean something. Look for Things to toss. My house is always a disaster, surely I should be using this time for something productive.

But I just... can't. I want to sit here and listen to nobody ask me for anything.

The thing is, I don't get a lot of time to myself, and as an introvert, I need some quiet time. NEED IT. I have three NOT QUIET children (even if my middle one is an introvert, she is a whiny one!). I homeschool. I am ALWAYS around people.

Not having quiet time gets on my nerves. Makes me edgy and more quick to be annoyed.

So from now on, I refuse to feel guilty that I flop on the couch once the kids go to bed. I will savour the hour of peace.

And only THEN, once I have recharged, will I get up and do something productive.

The Introvert at the Amusement Park

We are headed for the little kid amusement park today. As much as I tried to get out of going, my littlest one is still too little for everyone to be able to get on the rides with proper supervision. So I have to go.

Shudder.

Children everywhere. Rides. Noises. LINE UPS. Crappy food.

Shudder.

I'm bringing a book.

Having people over, even if your house isn't perfect

A friend came over for a visit yesterday. She invited herself over to see my recent home renovations. Now, I say "invited herself over," which usually has negative connotations but seriously, if you want to come to my house, waiting for me to ask you is going to take a long time.

Because just the THOUGHT of asking people to come to my house causes me ginormous gurgles of anxiety in my stomach. So I don't tend to invite people over.

The gurgles are partly anxiety in general and partly because, well, I usually feel my house is a disaster. It is definitely not ever going to win "neatest house on the block." Not by a long shot. The pressure to clean up is completely anxiety-inducing.

And since my favourite solution to anxiety is avoidance, I just... don't invite people over.

Now, because I have decided to embrace the state of the house and not make excuses for it (we'll just call it a work in progress) I decided not to tell her that the contents of my (former) office* are currently hanging out three feet away from my front door.

That was a bit of a surprise. Yay! Surprise! Thankfully she didn't run screaming from the house. I gave her a nice tour of our new kitchen and the finished basement. And showed her how empty the (former) office* is.

My point? I emptied out two boxes from the shelves last night. Got rid of 38 things and put a few more in the donate box (they don't count until they actually LEAVE the house).

* bedroom status pending

OK OK, I'm counting Things again

Yesterday I complained that I missed tallying how many things I get rid of. Last night I figured, what the heck, if I'm grumbling about not counting something when I throw it out/recycle it/donate it/pass it on, I might as well start counting again. Turn that grumble into a tick mark.

Back to living on the edge!

Three things on the list so far, and I have a pile of stuff to take to our Children's Museum - donations for their craft area. I wonder how many things will be on the list at the end of the year?

I'm not counting "things" this year... and it's kind of bugging me

I made the decision at the end of last year not to keep count of the things I removed from the house in 2016. We were gearing up to have our kitchen gutted and I knew the house was going to be chaos and I didn't want the pressure of a List. Then I ended up extremely sick with congestive heart failure and I REALLY knew that monitoring how many things I got rid of would need to be low on the priority list.

So, I haven't been keeping track. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I haven't been getting rid of stuff, but I haven't been tracking. When I was sicker and the house was a construction zone, I was fine with that.

But now construction is done and I'm feeling better and... not having the list is starting to bug me. I tossed a few things the other day and sure, it was good to have the space back but the TRUE thought running through my head was THAT COULD HAVE BEEN A TICK MARK ON MY LIST.

Strange much? (Yeah, I know, don't even go there.)

The other factor is that I'm prepping to paint the bedrooms. I've emptied the office (our third bedroom) because it is slated to become Kid#1's bedroom. That room has held junk for eleven years! It has always been a dumping ground for stuff. And it held two bookcases full of, you know, books. I've also taken the storage shelves out of each bedroom (and the office). Those shelves were temporarily in each bedroom to hold renovation stuff from the rest of the house.

Now all of that stuff is in our previously quite empty and lovely living room. Three sets of storage shelves and, oh, 12 piles of books. Plus the paper shredder and space heater. It all stares at me. It looms. I'm kind of wondering where all that junk from the office is supposed to go? OK, books are one thing. I have a plan for the books (get rid of some and the rest will go in the living room shelves). The rest? Where is it going to go???

OK, I could dump it all in the basement, but I really don't want to. I'm tempted to throw most of it out.

But if I throw it out and don't count it... that's going to bug me.

Do I start keeping track now - at the end of August? What would my goal be? Should I just see what the total is at the end of the year?

I Read It: Open Heart, Open Mind by Clara Hughes

Open Heart, Open Mind, is Clara Hughes' memoir. I was interested in reading this because she has been very open about her depression and, well, I wanted to know what she had to say.

I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the idea that she was so fucking miserable when she won her two bronze medals in Atlanta. I admire the shit out of that! She trained and trained, she made the podium TWICE, and yet... she was not in the least a happy, fulfilled person. Which just goes to show - you never know what is going on in someone's life.

I think one very important point to take from Hughes' story is that if such a strong woman didn’t realize she was depressed, no wonder depression is under-noticed. Hughes didn’t FEEL strong. She felt worthless. But she was a great cyclist! Who had OLYMPIC MEDALS. Of COURSE she was strong. But in her head, she did not feel strong. Point being, depression fucks with your mind.

I really want to thank Clara Hughes for her honesty regarding her depression, because only by talking more about this disease will it become easier to seek help. Remember: being depressed does not make you weak.

I'm not the only disorganized person on the planet!

It's difficult to feel alone. Even as a pretty introverted person, I still value closeness with people. It is always comforting to find people with whom you have something in common.

So here's the thing. I am not a naturally neat person. I procrastinate, telling myself I'll do it later (ummm, title of my blog???). I will put something somewhere "temporarily." Guess how long temporary is around me? Could be days, could be years. You never know.

Organization comes naturally to some people. One of my friend's husbands is a total neat freak, so even if she doesn't clean, HE does, and so their house remains presentable. I know others who are super SUPER organized, labels everywhere.

This is not me. Organization doesn't come easily to me. And I know, I know, there are lots of people out there who say they "aren't organized" and they feel like they are just barely keeping their heads afloat. Yeah, I know, it's all a matter of degree. But they are most likely more organized than I am.

Anyway, my point is that I FOUND SOMEONE ELSE IN INTERNETLAND WHO ADMITS THAT THEY ARE DISORGANIZED. The blog is A Slob Comes Clean. I am not the only disorganized housewife out there (rant about how I hate the term housewife in another post. Also homemaker. Blech. FYI, I like to call myself Retired, if I'm going to go with a label).

I am trying really hard not to just read the whole blog and procrastinate further on battling my house into submission. It is just so comforting to know that not everyone else is living the organized life.

OK, off I go!

Read this: Furiously Happy, by Jenny Lawson

If you have ever struggled with depression or anxiety, you should read Jenny Lawson's book, Furiously Happy. If you know someone who has depression or anxiety, you should read this book. Basically, everyone should read this book.

Jenny Lawson gives a remarkably honest insight into her mental struggles. I LOVED this book. You’d think a book about depression and anxiety would be, well, depressing, but Lawson is fucking hilarious.

It is so comforting to read about another person who does not have her shit together. She says she feels successful maybe 2 days a month - um, hello??? Me too??? Most days I fail miserably at getting my shit together. And on the days when I do in fact cook dinner, The Husband ends up staying late at work and ends up with reheated leftovers anyway. Which I think just proves that I shouldn’t even bother cooking dinner.

But I digress…

The idea of Furiously Happy is that you need to enjoy the good days, make them very memorable, to combat the dark days. So that in the midst of the darkness you still have those moments and maybe, just maybe, you can grab onto one of them and pull yourself a little further away from the dark side. To have these moments to live your life.

Anyway, just… read this book. Furiously.

I doubt that I will ever fly to Australia and stand by a koala wearing a koala costume like Lawson did, but I can live my own life in my own furious way. Take those good days and make FURIOUSLY HAPPY memories so that on those days when I’m too tired to do anything, at least I can say I already experienced whatever else I’ve already done and obviously that means taking a rest day/week/whatever will be just fine.

Diagnosis: Congestive Heart Failure

I am writing this because I found it very helpful and heartening to read about other people's stories with symptoms similar to mine. So if you are a young(ish) woman diagnosed with congestive heart failure, maybe this will help you know that you are not alone. This is the story of my diagnosis with congestive heart failure at the age of 39.

EKG. Chest X-ray. Echocardiogram. Angiogram. MRI of the heart.

Congestive heart failure.

Biventricular cardiomyopathy.

Diuretics. Beta blockers. ACE inhibitors.

The 6 minute walk test.

In January, all of these things became very real to me.

Towards the end of December, I started feeling out of sorts. I had some nausea. I was tired. I remember December 20 at our regular family Sunday dinner, I commented to my sister-in-law how I was so out of shape, I couldn't even haul my 3 year old out of her car seat that day without huffing and puffing. I also remember that night I threw up. I'm quite familiar with nausea but I don't actually throw up very often. But that night I did.

As the week progressed, my energy level plummeted. I got tired walking to the fridge. Crawling into bed was exhausting. I was just so. damn. tired.

Of course this was right before Christmas. The Husband said I should go to the doctor. I'm like, there are no doctors open the day before Christmas! Who am I going to see? I didn't ever feel like my life was in danger, it's not like I was bleeding to death, and I wasn't DYING, for crying out loud, so the ER seemed like a gross overreaction to feeling really tired. I could still walk up the stairs. I could still do anything - as long as I paced myself.

I dragged my ass through Christmas. I skipped Christmas Eve dinner (a HUGE tradition in my Ukrainian family) so that I could make sure I had enough energy for Christmas morning with the kids.

I'm not sure how I made it through the following week. I napped, sometimes three times a day. The Husband was home from work for a few days, so that was helpful. My kids watched a LOT of TV. Like, a LOT. I was too tired to care.

We stocked up on easy to eat/easy to prepare food. I was having trouble eating, because by the time I prepared something I was too tired to eat.

And the nausea. Ugh. It was exactly like my all-day sickness when I was pregnant. Food wasn't appetizing and I had low-grade nausea that made it very difficult to eat.

And remember the timeline - it was between Christmas and the New Year. A very difficult time to get in to see a doctor.  However I actually had a doctor appointment scheduled the Monday after the holidays (January 4) so I was hanging on until then.

I thought I was low in iron.

I thought I had the flu.

I thought I might have asthma.

I was slightly terrified that I was pregnant.

It never even crossed my mind that it could be my heart.

I dragged my sorry ass to the doctor's office. I said I'm not doing that great. I'm so tired. Just completely exhausted. Walking to the fridge makes me tired. EVERYTHING makes me tired.  And I'm having some shortness of breath. It's worse when lying down. I can't crawl into bed without feeling breathless. Sometimes I feel like I just can't take a deep enough breath. I have no appetite. I've lost weight because I can't eat. I'm nauseated, the nausea comes and goes.

The doctor sent me for four vials of blood worth of tests, plus a chest X-ray and EKG, and ordered an asthma test. I went immediately to get the X-ray and EKG.

I got a call in the afternoon, the doctor wants you to come in tomorrow.

Uh oh.

Next day, the doctor told me I had an enlarged heart. He was ordering an echocardiogram, which is a fancy word for an ultrasound of the heart. He told me the usual wait for the test was 6-7 months but he'd make some calls.

I don't know who he called but on Thursday, two days later, I got called about an appointment for the next day. Was I available? I told them I'd come in at midnight if I had to, I'd make that appointment come hell or high water!

In the meantime, I had decided that if I didn't get in for the echo within the week, I was going to the ER. Because I couldn't keep feeling like this. I felt AWFUL. The nausea was increasing. I was eating almost nothing - two spoonfuls of oatmeal, half a snack cup of applesauce - that was my total food intake for the DAY. I'm sure I lost a good 5-10 pounds between my doc appointment on Monday and my echo on Friday.

Friday afternoon, echocardiogram. I made The Husband leave work to take me - it was at a big hospital and I didn't quite know where I was going and I knew I didn't want to wander around in my state.

The echocardiogram was cool - it was really neat to see the heart working. I knew I was in trouble when they RN told me to wait for the doctor to come and talk to me. All the old ladies who were being tested were getting to go home, and I was sitting there, waiting. Ack!

The doctor showed up. He explained that my heart was not effectively pumping blood. My ejection fraction was under 20%, with normal being in the 50-60something range.  I'm pretty sure he asked me about my risk factors. He recommended that I be admitted, told me that something was off with my heart and they wanted to do some tests to investigate - an angiogram and an MRI. Being admitted would help speed the tests along.

A more senior doctor came to talk to us. The questions started:
So you're...?
39. I have 3 kids aged 9, almost 6, and 3.

Do you smoke?

No.

Do you drink?

No.

Do you have any family history of heart disease?

No. My family tends to live until 90 and then kicks the bucket. No history of early death from heart disease.

Do you have lupus/HIV/etc?

No.

Well, he said, it could be idiopathic, which means we just plain don't know why this happened. Normal is 50-60, yours is less than 20. He was surprised I looked as good as I did. He said he expected to see someone who looked a lot sicker based on my echocardiogram. The doctor said if you want, we can admit you today. It's Friday afternoon, which isn't the best time to be admitted, because not a lot can happen over the weekend, you won't get any tests until next week, but you can start treatment with drugs immediately. It's up to you, you can do this as an outpatient but getting the tests will take longer.

The Husband and I both immediately said I'd like to be admitted. I didn't want to feel crappy anymore. GIVE ME THE DRUGS!!!!

As we left to go to the other hospital, the RN who did my echocardiogram said "Sorry" - I'm like, it's not YOUR fault!

We drove to the other hospital, went right up to the ward and they gave me a room. 39 years old and I was in the cardiac ward of the hospital.

Update on 4030 things for 2015 and what's in store for 2016

Now that it's March, I am finally getting around to writing about my decluttering efforts last year. To say I smashed my goal is an understatement: I got rid of 6462 things.

Yowza!

And you know, it wasn't even hard. Yes, it took some dedication. But I steadily worked at getting stuff out of the house and I met my goal.

The other thing is, I don't miss any of it. Not a thing. Now partly this is because my house is complete chaos right now and I have the rest of my stuff crammed into much less space. But add 6462 things back and try to store them too? I don't think so!

Anyway, this whole "things" thing has worked really well for me. But... I'm not tracking what I get rid of this year. I will still get rid of things but I'm not formalizing it. Why? Well, number one is my heart condition. I have enough going on with that. And second, with renovations ongoing I have spent a lot of time moving things around the construction, and when they wrap up I'll have to unpack everything (ugh). I have enough going on with my stuff, never mind trying to track what I get rid of.